


How to Be Goth at Panera Bread

by howlikeagod



Category: What We Do in the Shadows (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, First Meetings, Gen, M/M, Pre-Canon, all guillermo knows is want to be vampire eat panera bread and lie, but only in the stupidest way possible, why do all my fics end up at CVS
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:13:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26207731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/howlikeagod/pseuds/howlikeagod
Summary: Plenty of nineteen-year-olds are trying to get out of food service. Guillermo is no different, though his career aspirations are a little unconventional.Or: how Guillermo de la Cruz navigated the rocky path to familiarhood by believing in himself, never giving up, and being really, really annoying.
Relationships: Guillermo de la Cruz & Nandor the Relentless, minor Guillermo/OMC
Comments: 32
Kudos: 44





	How to Be Goth at Panera Bread

**Author's Note:**

> do you ever look up pictures of Harvey Guillén from around 2009-2010 and think about a man with that baby face walking up to a vampire and saying "hire me"? because i do.

By any definition of virginity besides the most strictly heteronormative, Guillermo de la Cruz lost whatever was left of his when he was nineteen to a guy from Omegle with a vampire fetish.

If nothing else, it was a vast improvement from his previous quasi-erotic, vampire-themed online interactions. For starters, Donovan, thank God, wanted _Guillermo_ to pretend to be the vampire. Plus, he lived in New York—though hooking up had required making the trip to Brooklyn. On the cons side of the column, the vibe had been more Stephanie Meyer than Anne Rice, or even Darren O'Shaughnessy, which Guillermo still would have preferred. The second _Twilight_ movie was on its way that year. It was a difficult time for tried-and-true goths.

Also, one of Guillermo’s fangs fell out and Donovan almost choked on it. That was kind of a mood-killer.

But it was the best he could have hoped for, having mostly given up at least a month ago on meeting any actual vampires through that particular channel. The guy was nice and let Guillermo fuck him and bite him on the neck, and didn’t even kick him out when he realized how late it was and how long the subway ride back to the Bronx would take. Which turned out to be a problem, when Guillermo woke up the next morning eight minutes before his shift at Panera Bread was supposed to start.

“Fuck!” he shouted, upon witnessing the time on Donovan’s alarm clock. Then, for flavor, he added, “Shit!”

Guillermo reached for his glasses on the nightstand, knocked them onto the floor, and then nearly fell off the bed groping around for them.

Donovan mumbled questioningly from under a comforter he had managed to steal in its entirety over the course of the night. By the time he extracted himself enough to blink sleepily at Guillermo, Guillermo himself was hopping on one leg while wrestling the other into his pants with his phone pressed between shoulder and ear.

 _“Sorry,”_ Guillermo mouthed as it rang. _“I’m late for—_ Hiii, Beth! It’s Guillermo. I’m, um. I’m running a little late. I know I was supposed to call earlier, but I’m having some—Yeah, it’s, the train didn’t show up. Uh huh.”

He tripped on his own pants and toppled into an armchair piled with Donovan’s laundry. He hoped it was a clean laundry-chair and not a dirty laundry-chair. That seemed like the kind of preparation you’d make if you were going to have someone over.

“Yes, definitely. I’ll be there as soon as I—I can stay late today if you want me to—Oh. She hung up.” Guillermo sighed, shoved his phone into his pocket, and started buttoning up his shirt. It was the white one with the fake bloodstain on the inside of the collar.

“You good?” Donovan asked around a yawn.

“I’m supposed to be at work in,” he looked at the clock again, “three minutes. Hah,” he laughed, high and anxious.

“Where do you work?” Donovan made a valiant attempt to sound interested, but he had flopped right back into his pillow and closed his eyes the second he realized nothing was on fire.

“Panera,” Guillermo mumbled. “Shit, I’m going to have to get a cab.”

Donovan waved goodbye from under his mountain of blankets as Guillermo yanked his shoes on. They weren’t the non-slip ones he was supposed to wear to work—hopefully nobody spilled soup all over the floor again.

He hovered by the door for a second. Should he leave his number? Ask Donovan for his? The night hadn’t exactly been _perfect,_ but it was nice to be around somebody who not only didn’t laugh at him for all the vampire stuff, but actively enjoyed it. Even if he thought it was a kink thing and not, you know, Guillermo’s most earnest and ardent dream.

His hesitancy lasted a beat too long. Guillermo shut the apartment door behind him softly.

He walked down the hallway and then paused for an entirely different reason. Right, the stairs were in the opposite direction. He turned on his heel and retraced his steps from the night before, unwillingly remembering his jitters as he’d counted down the numbers on the apartment doors.

Behind him, a door opened.

“Guillermo,” Donovan called. Guillermo turned around and waited, mouth agape, as Donovan jogged up to him in slippers and a pair of blue-patterned boxers. He could see, in the mediocre lighting of the hallway, a crescent-moon bruise on Donovan’s neck where Guillermo’s teeth had not quite broken skin.

“Yeah?” Guillermo breathed.

Donovan held out a hand, from which a sheet of red fabric dangled like a dead fish.

“You forgot your cape.”

“Oh.” Guillermo grasped the faux crushed-velvet and balled it up in his hands. “Thanks.”

“No problem. Good luck getting to work.”

Guillermo had reasonable luck getting to work, as luck would have it. He had less luck scrubbing off the last of his makeup during a cab ride that dealt a bigger hit to his wallet than he had the energy to think about right then.

“Did you get punched in the face?” Beth asked bluntly from behind the register when Guillermo jogged in. She squinted at him as he ducked in the back.

“Yeah,” Guillermo muttered. “That’s what happened.”

He still had his cape wadded up in one hand. There was an open locker left in the break room, though it was the one that had smelled like onions for a year and a half and nobody knew why. Fuck it, he would need to wash the cape anyway.

There were always extra aprons and visors in the back. Those usually smelled worse than the unlucky locker. Guillermo suited up, glanced in the mirror of the employee bathroom, and grabbed some paper towel to dab at the stain of bloody lipstick over half his mouth and chin. Between that and the raccoon-eye remnants of eyeliner magnified by the curve of his glasses into something that could be mistaken for a pair of bruises, it did kind of look like he’d been hit by a train.

There. That would have to be good enough. Guillermo straightened his visor, straightened his spine, and shifted into Panera mode.

“You’re coming back again at four,” Beth said without preamble as Guillermo signed into the till.

“Okay,” he said. It wouldn’t give him enough of a break between shifts to go home and change, but he could jog to CVS and grab a cheap travel toothbrush. His mouth tasted like death, and not in a cool way.

Beth squinted as if waiting for any back-talk at the unexpected swing shift—or maybe trying to figure out if she would be responsible for calling him an ambulance if his supposed injuries led to him keeling over and drowning in the chicken noodle soup vat. Either way, she seemed to come to a satisfying conclusion after a moment and left him to it with a nod.

When he had a bad day at work, Guillermo sometimes imagined looking particularly rude customers in the eye, flashing a pair of perfect and terrible fangs, and ripping their throats out. Because he didn’t actually have a pair of perfect and terrible fangs, this usually translated into a polite smile as they called him an idiot to his face for not taking a coupon that expired two years ago.

Guillermo was pretty good at his job, all things considered.

“You look like hell,” was the common refrain today from a faceless line of customers.

“Mhm,” Guillermo agreed easily. “Do you have a rewards card?”

“Don’t listen to them,” Alicia said during a lull a couple hours after the start of Guillermo’s second shift. She was a sixteen-year-old who worked evenings and weekends and had decided Guillermo was her friend the moment he had mentioned _Interview with the Vampire_ was his favorite movie. She wasn’t as serious about the vampire thing as he was, but it was nice to chat with someone who understood the splendor of Antonio Banderas.

“Hm? Oh, it’s fine.” Guillermo shrugged. “Honestly, I was expecting more homophobia. Because of the—” He gestured to his face, meaning to indicate the smeared eyeliner but inadvertently referring to his general self.

“I think you look cool,” she said. “Like you died and crawled out of the grave.”

“Oh. Thanks.” A warm burst of pride filled Guillermo’s chest. Most people would have just said he looked hungover.

Alicia smiled and revealed a thin line of black lipstick stuck to her front teeth. Guillermo opened his mouth to point it out, and then stopped when the front door chimed.

“Oh my god,” Alicia whispered. “That guy’s got you beat.”

“He… really does.” Guillermo blinked.

The man standing in the doorway was tall and sturdy, a figure made even more imposing by the massive black cape sweeping from his shoulders. He had a heavy brow and thick hair that looked like the expensive wigs Guillermo would stare at enviously when he went to the nicer costume store in the next borough, a striking contrast to the deathly pallor of his skin. He stared around as if surveying a kingdom or a feast in his honor.

And, in the warm-but-corporate-approved setting of the Panera Bread, he gave off the demeanor of a very confused racehorse that had somehow wandered into a Zumba class.

“Can I help you, sir?” Guillermo called.

“May I come in?” he asked in an implacable accent. The man did something with his mouth that was probably supposed to be a smile but more accurately looked like he had just realized he’d stepped in something on the street and was hoping nobody else would notice.

“Sure,” Alicia said. Then, in an aside to Guillermo, “He’s hardcore.”

“Uh huh,” Guillermo agreed slowly. He tracked every beat of the man’s movement as he approached the counter.

“I am here,” he said grandly, “for your flossing thread.”

“Sorry?” Guillermo asked.

“The—” The man grimaced. He held up his hands to either side of his mouth—and now _those_ were a pair of perfect and terrible fangs—and mimed pulling a string through his teeth. He even added a quiet _eeh-uuh_ squeaking sound. “For cleaning my teeth. Is that not what you call it these days?”

“What we call—You mean _floss?”_

“Yes, yes, as I said.”

“Sir,” Guillermo said slowly, “this is a Panera Bread.”

“It’s not a Rite-Aid anymore?” The man seemed to deflate. “Are you sure?”

Guillermo looked pointedly at the case of baked goods to his left. “Yeah. I’m sure.”

“Oh.” The man swept up his cape in one hand and held the other out toward Guillermo’s face. He danced his fingers, which Guillermo tried to follow with his eyes and made himself a little dizzy. “You will tell me where I may purchase the floss for flossing.”

“There’s a CVS two blocks away,” he suggested.

“And a Walgreens like a block after that,” Alicia added.

“They might sell it at the bodega on the corner,” Guillermo said, grasping at the memory of every random shop on the street, “but they have weird hours.”

“I’m pretty sure they’re open ‘til two,” Alicia replied.

“Alright, alright, I get it! I came to the one place that doesn’t sell floss.” The man dropped his hand. He glared quietly at the two of them, then turned in a flurry of hair and cape and stalked out the door.

Guillermo tilted his head. He thought for a few seconds, then turned and walked away from the till.

“Guillermo?” Alicia called after him. “Where are you going?”

He kept walking until he made sure he was visible, but not too visible, in the peripheral vision of the night’s MOD, Anthony. He grabbed a to-go soup container, scooped up a dollop of broccoli-and-cheddar, dumped it on the floor, put his heel directly into the spilled soup, and wailed in feigned shock as he fell backwards into a half-full dish bin.

The shout and the clatter alerted Anthony, as well as the rest of the staff and half the people eating in the dining room.

“Are you okay?” Anthony hovered nervously. Guillermo felt a little bad for him, considering this was something like his second week as a manager, but there were more important things at stake.

“I… think I hit my head…” Guillermo said woozily.

“Shit,” Anthony cursed. “You were here this morning too, right? Maybe you should just go home.”

“Are you sure?” Guillermo added a little sway as he got to his feet.

“Yeah, we’re good here. I’ll take over your till. Um. You don’t need a hospital or anything, right? Cuz then I have to write an incident report—”

“No!” Guillermo said hurriedly. He cleared his throat. “I’ll be okay. Just gotta put some ice on this here noggin. Haha.” He gently rapped knuckles against his head and practically sprinted to the break room to throw off his apron and visor.

He burst into the lobby, stopped, bustled behind the counter to clock out on the till, and then took off out the doors. It was chilly—the previous night had been unseasonably warm, and Guillermo hadn’t had the chance to grab a jacket in between then and now. He huffed out a breath and turned to the task at hand.

Okay. The bodega was closest, so Guillermo dashed as quickly as he could to the corner. A bell rang as he pushed open the door. He let it shut behind him and looked around to find the place conspicuously empty of caped strangers.

“Did, uh, a big, weird goth man come in here just now?” he asked the lone attendant. Guillermo recognized the guy from the last few times he’d been in here—his name started with an M, he thought. Or maybe an L.

M-or-maybe-L looked up from arranging a shelf of cigarettes and rolled his eyes.

“Motherfucker stood in the doorway and hissed at me when I said we don’t sell floss.” He raised an eyebrow. “Do you know him?”

“Yes,” Guillermo lied. “Did he say where he was going?”

“Said he was going to _the sea of vee-ess.”_

“Great.” The bell rang again as Guillermo practically leapt out into the street.

“Hey, _paisa,_ ” a voice called after him.

Guillermo caught the door before it could swing shut and stuck his head back inside.

“What?”

The cashier looked at him strangely.

“Nothing.” M-or-maybe-L shook his head. “Be careful, yeah?”

Guillermo’s fingers flexed on the edge of the door. He looked out into the cold street, where the headlights of a passing car sent a strip of excess light running down the sidewalk. It illuminated a tall, dark figure walking at a pace that would take him out of Guillermo’s sights if he didn’t get a move on.

“Sure,” he said distractedly, and took off after the vampire.

The sidewalk wasn’t crowded, but it was far from empty. The sudden drop in temperature had brought out puffy jackets and long, fashionable coats, effectively turning every third person into a potential broad-shouldered creature of the night.

“CVS,” Guillermo muttered as if he might forget. “CVS.” He wrapped arms around himself, wishing he’d stopped to grab his cape out of the locker before he left work. He would have probably looked utterly fucking bonkers, stalking a random man while wrapped in a Party City vampire cape approximately as thick as single-ply toilet paper, but it would have been better than nothing.

Instead, he was just stalking a random man in a fake-bloodstained button-up. Obviously much more normal.

The lights of the CVS appeared before him like a lighthouse to a lonely ship lost in fog. Which, once Guillermo thought the simile through, would be there to warn the ship of grave danger.

‘Danger’ as a concept ceased to have any meaning to Guillermo when he saw the vampire stuck on the threshold. Guillermo crept up behind him and realized the problem immediately.

He assumed the vampire’s usual approach would be to hover conspicuously, as he had at Panera, until someone extended the awkward politeness of inviting him into their public place of business. The CVS cashier, however, faced perpendicular to the doors. On the ceiling across from the check-out was a convex mirror.

For a normal patron of the establishment, the cashier would be able to see them in the mirror as they entered or left. Guillermo’s stomach swooped with joy and his head felt distantly fuzzy as he saw his own reflection in the mirror—with no large, awkward goth man in front of him.

The cashier spotted Guillermo and turned her head.

“Hi—Oh! I didn’t see you there, sir,” she said apologetically to the vampire. “Welcome.”

“Thank you,” the vampire breathed in relief. His shoulders relaxed as if he’d had his face pressed into an invisible wall which had suddenly vanished. “Finally,” he muttered.

Guillermo followed behind with a polite nod to the cashier. She smiled back before turning to help another customer who had just approached the counter. Alright, good. She would be too distracted to notice Guillermo following the vampire around CVS at an inconspicuous distance. Hopefully.

Luckily, the vampire’s height and distinctive man-bun—was that a vampire thing?—meant he was pretty easy to spot over the shorter shelves. He stalked down the toothpaste aisle while Guillermo crept stealthily behind a display of tampons on sale.

Plan. Plan. Guillermo needed a plan. How to introduce himself to a vampire without getting eaten?

How to introduce himself at all? That wasn’t Guillermo’s strong suit with other _humans_.

 _Hi, I’m Guillermo de la Cruz—_ Would a vampire take offense to the _Cruz_ part of his name? It’s not like he’d be blessing himself in the man’s face. Just avoid any _Nuestro Padre_ s or _Jesus fucking Christ_ s and he should be fine. Yeah.

Okay, name out of the way. _You might remember me from Panera Bread._ The Panera Bread that the vampire had expected to be a Rite-Aid. Guillermo and Alicia hadn’t exactly given him a five-star experience at their humble franchise, though Guillermo doubted he’d leave a Yelp review. Did vampires use Yelp? Did they have some deep-web Vampire Yelp? He could see the use of that, rating establishments on willingness to welcome them inside and percentage of slow-moving virgin patrons with high blood sugar.

Unless sugary blood was gross. Guillermo wouldn’t know yet. Nor would he _ever_ if he didn’t get a grip.

“Just walk up and introduce yourself,” Guillermo whispered to his reflection in the narrow mirror on the rotating sunglasses display. “Easy. You got this.”

He turned around and immediately saw the vampire cleaning house, filling a hand basket with every single packet of floss the CVS had to offer.

“Ooh, two for one!” he crowed happily.

Guillermo took a deep breath.

“Hi, excuse me—”

“Ah!” The vampire made a startled sound and looked at him suspiciously. “If you’re looking for floss, they don’t have it. Completely gone.” He hid the basket behind his back. He still held the two-for-one pack in his other hand.

“O…kay. No, I’m not looking for floss. I’m—”

“Good, because there is none here. They should be ashamed of themselves, not selling any floss on the floss shelf. Outrageous.”

“I’m Guillermo,” he blurted.

“Good for you,” the vampire replied with an uncertain almost-smile. His default expression seemed to be minor discomfort. He started moving away, which was completely unacceptable to Guillermo. He had to get his foot in the door somehow.

“What’s with all the floss?” he blurted.

“What floss?” The vampire pulled his cape over the edge of the basket. Guillermo looked pointedly at the package in his hand. The vampire held it up and mugged ruefully.

“Just curious,” Guillermo shrugged.

The vampire let out a sound somewhere between a sigh, a hiss, and a kettle boiling over.

“Dental hygiene is important!” He sounded scandalized that Guillermo would even question this. “Especially for v—”

The vampire dragged out the _v_ sound awkwardly for several consecutive seconds as Guillermo’s eyebrows crept higher and higher up his forehead.

“—fellas,” he landed on, “such as myself.”

“Fellas,” Guillermo repeated flatly. “That’s what you’re going with?”

“I have an accent! Don’t make fun of me. Very rude.”

Guillermo had to give him that one. “You’re right. Sorry.”

“Your apology is accepted, strange little man.” The vampire dropped his last package of floss into the overflowing basket and waved a hand dismissively. “Now, away with you. Shoo.”

He started walking toward the register. Guillermo followed.

“What’s your name?”

“Yeesh,” the vampire hissed. “Are you trying to get me to join a cult or some shit? I’m not interested. Fucking guy.”

“No, I’m not in a cult,” Guillermo promised.

The vampire looked down at him suspiciously. Guillermo blinked back, innocent as could be, walking at the perfect speed to remain in step with the vampire’s much longer legs. There wasn’t any point in trying to pretend like he wasn’t following him.

“That sounds like what someone in a cult would say.”

“Are you from around here?”

“No,” the vampire replied slowly. “Staten Island.”

“What are you doing in the Bronx?”

“There was a Rite-Aid where I bought my floss last time. It is not there anymore. Now it’s a,” he sneered, _“Panera Bread.”_

“How long ago did you last buy floss?” Guillermo asked incredulously. They were in line at the counter now. The vampire looked increasingly antsy to get away from Guillermo—which assured him that he wouldn’t rip his throat out in front of random people. He tucked that knowledge away: vampires keep a low profile.

Guillermo pressed his lips together and cast a glance over the huge velvet cape trailing across the dirty linoleum floor. Maybe not _that_ low a profile.

“Oh, last time I ran out. Thirteen years or so,” the vampire said casually. He paused, opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, and then waved a hand over Guillermo’s face. “You will forget I said that.”

Guillermo did not, in fact, forget he said that.

The cashier smiled politely at the vampire after the last customer took her receipt. The vampire stepped up to the counter. He looked over his shoulder at Guillermo. Guillermo continued to hover next to him.

“Are you going to… buy something?”

“No,” Guillermo replied. He nodded in acknowledgement when the cashier made eye contact and stuck his hands in his pockets.

“Okay…” The vampire shook his head, making a weirded-out face that made Guillermo bite back a laugh. He paid for his floss.

“That’s a lot of floss,” the cashier commented.

“I… have… a lot of teeth,” the vampire replied. He gave her an awkward smile.

The cashier looked disbelievingly at Guillermo. Guillermo mirrored the vampire’s smile with what he hoped was a more normal and disarming one of his own.

“He does have a lot of teeth,” Guillermo confirmed. The vampire looked between the two of them.

“Alright. Have a good night?” The cashier handed the vampire two plastic bags bulging with packets of floss.

“Thank you.”

He swept out of the CVS. Guillermo followed, wishing he could sweep like that.

They got about three blocks before the vampire said anything. He kept throwing confused glances over his shoulder at Guillermo, teeth bared not in malice but in something closer to exasperation. That was good. It was better than bloodlust, anyway.

He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, put his fists on his hips—CVS bags still dangling from one wrist—and glared down at Guillermo.

“Are you going to fucking stalk me all the way to Staten Island?” he demanded.

“What’s your name?” Guillermo asked again.

“I—What the fuck, I asked you a question first!”

“Technically, I asked you first. Back at the store.” Guillermo jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “You didn’t answer.”

The vampire’s brows tightened over his dark eyes. His face smoothed out into something flatter—colder. It hit Guillermo like a punch to the gut that the creature he was doing a great job annoying to a second death could effortlessly kill him right here and now, before Guillermo had done anything to get what he wanted. Tenacity was a virtue of Guillermo’s, but maybe delicacy was a more important trait when dealing with the undead.

“Nandor,” he said shortly. “Nandor the Relentless. That’s what they called me long ago. Because I never relent.”

“Oh.” All the air in Guillermo’s lungs left him at once, in relief at not dying where he stood and wonder at knowing the real name of a real vampire.

“Is that what you wanted? Can I go home now?” he said testily.

“I want—” Guillermo began. Nandor’s lip began to curl as soon as he started talking. There was a _whoosh_ of air, a blur of black, the sound of two dozen packets of floss hitting the sidewalk.

He was gone.

After a brief moment of pure, frozen _What the fuck?_ Guillermo regained his faculties. Vampire speed—so that was real, too. Cool.

_Cool._

_No, Guillermo, focus._ He crouched down to investigate the CVS bag. By the look of it, the flimsy plastic handles of one of the bags had split when Nandor took off at a pace that should have broken the sound barrier. He gathered up the spilled floss, stuffed it back in the bag, and noticed one other thing that had fallen.

“Huh.” Guillermo picked up the receipt. Printed across the top was, presumably, the name on the vampire’s credit card: _Nandor Therelentless._

“Nandor… the… Relentless. Staten… Island,” Guillermo typed into Facebook’s search bar. He hit _Enter._

He waited.

He hit _Enter._

A little circle next to his cursor spun. Facebook vanished and left a blank page behind.

Guillermo sighed. He pulled off his headphones only to be greeted with the sounds of vigorous vacuuming. He hopped off the bed and stuck his head out into the hallway.

“Amá _. Amá!”_

The vacuum continued to whir.

Wordlessly, Guillermo came through the kitchen and into the living room. He scooted behind his mother, found the router cable she’d unplugged, and stuck it back in. His mother turned and nearly smacked her forehead into his face with a yelp.

“Memo!” She clutched her chest and laughed breathlessly. _“Me has asustado. Calladito.”_ She patted him on the cheek.

“Sorry. The, the internet.” He pointed at the router, half shouting since she hadn’t bothered to turn off the vacuum. Guillermo then beat a hasty retreat back to his room before she could ask how his day at work was or where he’d been last night.

Nandor wasn’t on Facebook. That shouldn’t have come as a shock—who knew how old he was, or how much he kept up with modern technology. He hadn’t known his favorite Rite-Aid had been a Panera Bread for at least several years, after all.

But that didn’t mean Nandor had left no imprint on the internet.

It took some combing through the surprising number of Nandors in the New York Metropolitan Area, but a recent post caught Guillermo’s eye.

> **Houston just looooves making me clean up after her friends too. Might as well go work for Nandor instead, I hear he’s got an opening LOL**

The post had a reply that read:

> **More like the Relentlessly boring! You’re better off with the tweens. XD**

And another:

> **Guys, keep it in the private group!!!**

Guillermo stalked the poster’s timeline for longer than he’d care to admit. Standard stuff, if slightly off now that Guillermo was looking for vampire-related details even more than he was usually looking for vampire-related details.

A lot of vague complaints about work, and a lot of even vaguer complaints about smelling bad because of work. A lot of—Oh. A lot of posts about vampires, actually. Mostly bad puns— _fangs_ to meet you, was that really the best she could do?

When Guillermo clicked back to look at the original post again, it had been deleted.

He drummed his fingers against the edge of his laptop keyboard. He bit his lip.

“Nothing ventured,” Guillermo muttered to himself.

 _Hey,_ he began in her direct messages, an inauspicious statement in any other context, _this might be a weird question, but—_

Staten Island was almost two hours from the Bronx by public transportation, depending on the time of day and whether one stayed on the bus line or switched from the subway.

Guillermo called in sick to Panera Bread. Beth wasn’t happy about it, but if all went well he’d be quitting as soon as possible. If all didn’t go well, he’d probably be dying instead. Either way, fuck Panera Bread.

The well-tended topiaries in the front garden were at odds with the way the dilapidated old house looked a week away from being condemned. It even had a scary wrought-iron fence, though that fence was only a couple feet high.

He paced back and forth. Six bus drivers stopped and opened the doors for him as he waited for the sun to go down. In their defense, there was a bus stop right outside the house.

 _You’re too genre-savvy_ , Guillermo thought to himself, _to just knock on the door._

On the one hand, a vampire might invite him into their home. On the other hand, a _vampire_ might invite him into their _home._ Nandor had been awkward and not very neck-bitey when they’d met, but that was in the middle of the street in the Bronx. Now, this was his home turf: a dark, private corner of the least New York of the burroughs.

But this time, Guillermo was prepared. He had it all planned out: what he was going to ask for, what he’d offer in exchange, and what that agreement would entail. He even had a gift ready.

Lights came on in the house. Guillermo took a deep breath.

“Hello!” he called from the sidewalk. “Hello?”

He waited. There was movement behind the covered windows. The front door opened.

“We don’t want cookies! No thank you!” called Nandor. He paused, narrowed his eyes at Guillermo across the lawn, and shouted, “Hey! You’re that fucking guy again!”

“I want to talk to you!”

“No!” Nandor started to close the door.

Sweat prickled at Guillermo’s hairline. If this didn’t work out, he didn’t know where he’d go next. His one shot, his _best_ shot, slipping away. He pulled out the big guns.

“I brought your floss!”

Nandor stopped. Guillermo held up the new plastic bag he’d transferred the contents of the old one into.

“Leave it on the porch!”

“Not unless you come talk to me!”

“Yeesh, fine.” Nandor shut the door behind himself and stalked across the lawn. He stopped a few feet away on the other side of the fence, tall and imposing and obviously annoyed. “What do you want?”

Guillermo breathed. He wished that he’d actually made the cue cards he thought about making, but the statement hadn’t been hard to memorize. _You can do this, Memo._

“I hear you’re looking for a new familiar,” he said, “and I want to be a vampire.”

Guillermo held out the bag of floss as an offering. Nandor’s face went through a short journey from surprised to thoughtful to blank again. He stepped closer, slowly, and took the bag from Guillermo’s hand with something approaching reverence.

He opened his mouth. Guillermo could see his fangs. He was so preoccupied with relief that he’d actually done it, actually seen this impossible task through to the end, that he nearly missed the one-word answer:

“No.”


End file.
